Park Ranger Youth Work Study Program puts Austin youth to work!

Austin Parks Foundation is proud to partner with the Park Ranger Youth Work Study Program and provide tools for this great initiative.

The Parks and Recreation Department, Park Ranger Division, is participating in the Work Based Learning Program/ Summer Youth Employment program offered by the City of Austin, and the Travis County Health and Human Services Departments.  This program targets youth between the ages of 14 and 17 years who reside and attend school in Austin and/or Travis County.

The Park Rangers have been working with twenty young adults throughout the summer.  In addition to providing real world experience, the Park Ranger division is concurrently providing programming, preserve work days, and activities that will better connect these young adults with their natural spaces and parks to encourage leadership, park stewardship, and outdoor efficacy.

Canoeing Austin

Hands on Gardening

Mulching at Blunn Creek

Mulching at Robert E Lee

Wheel Barrows, Workers, and Tools, oh my!

Spelunking!

Short Tribute to An Amazing Volunteer: Jerry

Jerry at rest (temporarily)

Hot enough for ya?  Despite the heat and drought, we’ve had a lot of volunteers during this brutal summer out working with us in parks and preserves across Austin.  We’ve had people cleaning pools, mulching trees and plants, spreading compost and watering, watering and watering.  With 94 different groups of volunteers who have adopted parks, there are a lot of people out there that we can recognize and we’d like to thank them all – as we move into the “third month of August” in 2011 – for doing their best to help the Parks and Recreation Department through out 2011.

But, we’d like to recognize one person in particular – Jerry Levenson.

Jerry retired from IBM a few years ago and embarked on a new career working in the great outdoors.  Jerry regularly volunteers with a lot of different groups, even going on “vacations” with our partners the Central Texas Trail Tamers – doing trail, rock and invasive work in national parks in Colorado, West Texas and New Mexico.

Have we mentioned that we call Jerry the human chainsaw?

Jerry has many partners who work with him – including Nadene Morning, Mike Rogan, on invasive removal.  He has helped us tremendously with many invasive species management efforts in many parks and preserves, including on the south side of Barton Springs Pool in the past few months.  He’s always willing to lead groups of volunteers and there’s a reason we call him the human chainsaw – check out the pictures of cut stumps and you’ll get the idea.

Great looking new observation deck that Jerry built (with help from Nadene and others...)

Jerry isn’t one for pausing and getting thanks for the work he’s done, mostly because he looks at all of the work that has to been done.  But, we want to thank Jerry for all of the help he has given to our parks system this year, in past years and hopefully, for many more years to come.

Thanks Jerry!

Charlie McCabe

Executive Director

Austin Parks Foundation

Invasive Trees Mulched Up South of Barton Springs Pool

We’re nearly done with our invasive removal project south of Barton Springs Pool.  We began the work back in April and thanks to the great work of our amazing volunteers and volunteer leaders, including Jerry, Nadene and Mike, the help of the Parks Department’s Forestry Group (lots of pickup of brush), Bartlett Tree Experts and Natural Texas with Carl Brockman, who gave us a reduced rate for chipping and grinding up all of mulch.

Half of the big brush pile all ground up, with half to go...

Due to the drought and high tempartures, we have spread all of the chips and mulch across the ground evenly, versus piling up the mulch for use later in the fall. This is due, largely to concern from neighbors and the parks department that the mulch piles might smoulder. Teh next steps are to work with the Short-term Barton Springs Grounds Improvements Plan (pending final designs and Parks Department approval) and well as with the Parks Dept. Forestry Group who are contemplating some bare root planting efforts this coming winter. (That sounds nice just thinking about it.)

the Natural Texas Forestry Mower, which ground up alot of the bigger trees and brush

All mulch ground up on the main site.

Cool Art in Cameron Park, Waco

Great use of willow stalks harvested from the nearby river at Cameron Park in Waco which we saw on a recent visit.

You can walk through the willow constructed artwork